This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2002-51191, filed Aug. 28, 2002, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data detection circuit and method that can be used in a microprocessor, and more particularly, to a data detection circuit and method that detect a bit that is the least significant among bits having a first logic value in N-bit input data and a bit that is the second least significant among bits having the first logic value in the N-bit input data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a trailing one or trailing zero circuit is a circuit which detects the location of a value 1 or a value 0 in a data element, by examining input binary data from the least significant bit (LSB) to the most significant bit (MSB) of the input binary data. Meanwhile, a leading one or leading zero circuit is a circuit which detects the location of a value 1 or a value 0 in a data element, by examining input binary data from the MSB to the LSB of the input binary data.
Trailing one circuits and leading one circuits are commonly employed in adders, multiple registers, address detection circuits, and test processors, which, in turn, are common components of microprocessors. Thus, the operation speed of a trailing one circuit or leading one circuit can greatly influence the operation speed of a computer.
There is a demand for contemporary computers to be capable of processing a large amount of data in a very short time. In order to meet the demand for high performance in the computer system, the trailing one or leading one circuits deployed in adders, multiple registers, address detection circuits, and test processors, must also operate at the high performance standard.